Federal judge pauses Trump’s federal worker buyout plan

A federal judge in Boston on Thursday temporarily halted the Trump administration’s offer for federal workers to accept eight months of pay and benefits in exchange for their immediate resignations.

U.S. District Judge George O’Toole ordered the administration to extend the midnight Thursday deadline until after a 2 p.m. hearing Monday.

Federal employees were sent a Jan. 28 “Fork in the Road” email offering at least 2 million federal workers a buyout. So far, roughly 60,000 have accepted, and White House officials said the number is expected to increase.

“We encourage federal workers in this city to accept the very generous offer. If they don’t want to show up to the office. If they want to rip the American people off, then they are welcome to take this offer, and we’ll find highly competent people to take these roles,”  White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday.

Labor unions for federal employees sued the Office of Personnel Management in the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts over an “arbitrary and capricious” directive offering early retirement plans to dramatically downsize the federal workforce.

“We are pleased the court temporarily paused this deadline while arguments are heard about the legality of the deferred resignation program. We continue to believe this program violates the law, and we will continue to aggressively defend our members’ rights,” said Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, one of the unions in the lawsuit.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the National Association of Government Employees are other complainants in the lawsuit. Democracy Forward, a left-leaning legal advocacy group, filed the lawsuit on behalf of the unions.

Members of the military and other national security and first responder workers were excluded. Still, the buyout offer rattled the federal workforce and drew significant criticism from House and Senate Democrats.

President Trump is seeking to slim down the government and end wasteful spending. In addition to offering buyouts, he ordered all federal employees to return to work in the office. Most work at home at least part time, leaving many costly federal office buildings vacant.

Attorneys for the unions argued in the lawsuit that the “Fork Directive” does not consider “adverse consequences” on the functioning of the federal government and offers conflicting information about how the directive would be carried out.

The lawsuit claims the mass buyout conflicts with “reasoned practices” of government restructuring and ignores past methods of reducing the government workforce.

The lawsuit claims the buyouts aim to replace outgoing employees with people politically aligned with Mr. Trump. It argues that there is no guarantee that the buyout offer will provide eight months of pay because a temporary bill to fund the government expires in March.

“If these employees leave or are forced out en masse, the country will suffer a dangerous one-two punch. First, the government will lose expertise in the complex fields and programs that Congress has, by statute, directed the Executive to faithfully implement. The government will have fewer qualified employees to execute the statutorily-required tasks that still remain,” the lawsuit said.

Attorneys asked the judge to halt the “Fork Directive” and its Feb.  6 deadline for at least 60 days by declaring it illegal. They also asked Judge O’Toole, who was appointed by President Clinton, to require the Trump administration to provide legal justification and a new directive for employees.

In 1995, Mr. Clinton offered buyouts that paid up to $25,000 for thousands of federal workers outside the Defense Department. More than 100,000 federal workers took the offer, and the administration said it was on track to cut more than 270,000 positions overall.

Unlike Mr. Trump, Mr. Clinton first received congressional approval for his buyout plan, which he said was targeted at duplicative or unneeded positions.

“Looking back, I can safely say that our buyout program has been a huge success. It achieved what we had hoped: to help us cut the workforce in a fiscally responsible and humane way,” Mr. Clinton said afterward.

• Jeff Mordock contributed to this report.